Emptying The Madhouse

QUICK TAKE on the unpardonable Scooter Libbyration: At first glance Bush is throwing a bone to his hardcore base by commuting Libby's sentence, but this will give Dems the moral high ground on the upcoming campaign trail. Karl Rove knew something had to be done quickly to get conservative editorial writers and right-wing talk show hosts back on board after the immigration bill fiasco. Amazingly, heirhead Paris Hilton ends up doing more time for drunk driving than a high government official convicted of perjury/obstruction of justice. And we don't even get to see Scooter crying for his mommy in the courtroom before his ass is put in stir. This comes down to Dick Cheney once again saying Fuck you libs, can't touch us. But what did you really expect from an organized criminal enterprise barely disguised as a governing body, like something straight out of a bad Sopranos episode. One thing to remember is that the #1 issue among voters in the 2006 election was corruption, so this could be a blessing in disguise in the long run if the Dems manage to spin it right.

Well, WFAN finally gave us something even worse on morning radio than blowhard Mike Francesa pontificating on subjects he knows nothing about: his afternoon partner, dopey Chris Russo, droning on and on, segment after dreadful segment, about Wimbleton tennis. Nobody cares. NOBODY! This is atrocious radio entertainment.

While hosting the morning slot last week, know-it-all Francesa hinted a few times, in his typically obnoxious way, that the I-Man himself soon could be coming back to the 'FAN fold in some way, but mysteriously left it at that.

Speaking of Imus, longtime listeners will remember how the news-obsessed I-Man would point out network newsbabes he was keeping an eye on. Well, I got one: Lara Logan of CBS. Sometimes she does stuff for 60 Minutes, but you'll see her almost nightly on the evening news reporting from Iraq or other hot spots. She's stunningly beautiful and obviously smart, but her sexy British accent (actually South African) is what puts her over the top. Memo to network honcho Les Moonves: Much more of her, much less of Katie Couric.

Mike Lupica of The Daily News has not only become increasingly annoying, courtesy of his steady stream of anti-Yankee cheap shots, but also more and more confounding lately. I used to respect his opinions even if I rarely agreed with them, whereas now, save for his occasional anti-Bush or Cheney column, I find myself disagreeing with almost everything he writes, while growing to detest almost everything about him. Is it just me, or have I tapped into something larger as usual?

Somehow there's no there there anymore when it comes to Lupica, despite (or maybe because of) his overexposure; he's lost what little touch he once had and now he seems to be adrift, flailing around in an effort to hit all the right Man of the People-type notes. How else to explain his sports novels for young people series that the News is always hyping, or whatever his corny-ass books for teens are called.

Lupica has on occasion "confessed" that it was the muckraking of writers like Jimmy Breslin that inspired him to get into the newspaper business in the first place. That's just a bad joke now, witness his recent column about American Idol being great family entertainment instead of the absolute dreck we all know it is. In his most recent Sunday column, the first half of which is taken up by yet another Yank-bashing screed, he writes, "I haven't seen "Live Free or Die Hard," but my position has always been that Bruce Willis couldn't make enough "Die Hard" movies to suit me. " I mean, how pathetically mediocre is that sentiment? Stick to sports, Little Mike. Lupica becomes more like Larry King every day, and obviously that's in no way intended as a compliment.

Even when Lupica comes back down to earth and deigns to weigh in on one of the sports people actually watch, I am left scratching my proverbial head once again. What do you make of this little beauty he threw at his readers last Sunday, when we all would have better off if he had instead tossed it in the trashcan? Out of absolutely nowhere and apropos of nothing previously mentioned in the column up to that point, he writes: "Say it again: The next time the Pistons are in the NBA Finals, send up a flare. And who cares about the Pistons, anyway? The Dallas Mavericks are my team." Whaaaahhh? Come back to us, little guy, if only for your family's sake.

And speaking of no there there, Steve Malzberg, half a schmendrick when it comes to politics and a total putz when it comes to almost everything else, has replaced Lionel evenings on AM radio outpost WOR-710. He comes on right after reactionary madman Michael Savage stops polluting the airwaves at 9:00, ensuring a fair & balanced look at the issues. I listened to Malzberg for literally less than 5 minutes the other night before I had to flee in disgust, but that was more than enough time for miserable Malzberg to repeatedly insist that the terrorists were waiting for the Democrats to take over the White House before striking the U.S. in a major way again. I'm tellin' ya, I'm tellin' ya, he stridently assured his few remaining listeners, with the absolute certainty common to the delusional right-wing punditry, but alas offering no plausible proof or reasonable justification for his ludicrous position.

Francesa's take on Michael Moore: "He's a good filmmaker, but who made more money from the War than him? This is a guy who takes private jets to talk to college kids!" I can think of a few guys right off the bat who are getting obscenely rich off the fiasco in Iraq. One is the vice president with his lucrative Halliburton shares, the other is Rudolph Ghouliani with his lucrative homeland security contracts ... each of these "sickos" in his own way has cashed in big on 9/11 and the subsequent invasion of Iraq.

Funny thing is, usually Francesa is first on line sucking up to the rich and famous, because he no doubt counts himself in such rarefied company. Witness his cringe-inducing, butt-kissing interviews with the former mayor, who jets around the country and charges much higher fees than Michael Moore to deliver his scary stump speeches,which exploit his self-inflated role in 9/11 while shrilly lecturing America on who should lead the endless war on terror (Republicans) and who should not (Democrats). It will be a great day indeed when Rudy Ghouliani is mathematically eliminated from the race, because even in these scary End Times, you can ghoul some of the people some of the time, but you can't ghoul all the people all the time.